Reconfiguring Intergenerational Reciprocity

Abstract

This chapter traces the trajectories through which aging migrant populations navigate temporalities of migration as they reconstruct intergenerational intimacy. It argues that aging immigrants transform cultural ideals of aging and family in response to changes in their social worlds across life stages. It also offers the concept of reconfigured reciprocity to analyze the processes through which aging immigrants fashion cultural logics of intergenerational relations to sustain connections with their children and their children's families. The chapter focuses on older immigrants that embraced ethnic traditions regarding elder care and transformed reciprocal relationships with their immediate kin. It highlights the aging immigrants' assessment of family relations that is undoubtedly biased or selective and their understanding of receiving and transnational contexts that are stereotypical or oversimplified.